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AN HISTORICAL A '^ 



UQi. 



D^I^lVERED AT THK 



UWVEILIMI^ of the MOWUk 



KRECTED BY THE vSTATE OF MARYLA. 



TO THE MEMORY OF 



Leonard Calvert, 



THE FIRST GOVERNOR OF MARYLAND, 



St. Mary's City, St. Mary's County, Md. 



JUNE 3, 1891, 



J. THOMAS SCHARF, A. M., LL D. 

BALTIMORE. 

.-J 



25-805 




HISTORICAL ADDRESS. 



Mi\ Chairman , Reverend Clergy, 

Ladies and Geyitlemen : 

I fear I shall neither meet your expectations 
nor do justice to myself, as circumstances 
beyond my control have rendered it impossible 
for me to devote as much of my time to pre- 
paration as is indispensable to a creditable 
performance of the duty assigned me. 

When* we reflect on the influence which has 
flowed, and is still flowing in ever fresh and 
ceaseless streams from this soil, which two 
hundred and fifty-seven years ago was trod 
for the first time by the foot of civilized Chris- 
tian man ; when we reflect how mightily that 
influence prevailed and how widely it has per- 
vaded the world — inspiring and aiding the 
settlement of Maryland, and, through Mary- 
land, our whole wide-spread country, and thus, 
through the example of our country and its 
institutions, extending the principles of civil 
and religious freedom to the remotest regions 
of the earth, leaving no corner of Christendom, 
or even of Heathendom, unvisited or unrt'- 



freshed— we should be dead, indeed, to every 
emotion of gratitude to God or man were we 
not to hail this celebration as one of the 
grandest in the calendar of the ages. 

We are here, my friends, to celebrate the 
unveihng of a monument, erected by a grate- 
ful State to the memory of Leonard Calvert, 
the first Governor of a colony which estab- 
lished a government where the persecuted and 
oppressed of every creed and every clime 
might repose in peace and security, adore 
their common God, and enjoy the l^riceless 
blessings of civil and religious liberty. Other 
States and countries have their "Pilgrim 
Landings/' which have left a proud and shin- 
ing mark on the historic page, but no other 
landing, temporary or permanent, upon our 
own or upon any other shore, can ever super- 
sede or weaken the hold the Maryland Pil- 
grims have upon the world's remembrance 
and regard. Here the child, Independence- 
was born, and here was laid the groundwork 
for that comi)lete superstructure which was 
afterwards reared by the hands of Jefferson 
and his illustrious co-laborers in the cause of 
truth. • 



Turn back with me to that epoch of spring 
solstice, over two centuries and a half ago, 
and let us spend a portion of our time in 
attempting to recall the precise incidents which 
then occurred on this sacred spot on which we 
are assembled, with some of their immediate 
antecedents and consequences. It is an old 
story, it is true ; but there are some old stories 
which are almost forgotten into newness, and 
there are some old stories which are actually 
new to every rising generation. 

The origin and settlement of Maryland may 
be traced to ecclesiastical tyranny. At the 
close of the sixteenth and begining of the 
seventeenth centuries, a severe and cruel per- 
secution began in England. Kingly preroga- 
tive, and popular tumult cursed the land. 
Religion was fashioned into a cloak for 
villains, and revolution became an apology for 
tyrants. The mass of men could comprehend 
no perfect right beyond their own immediate 
association in politics or religion. The flames 
of persecution were lighted all around the 
land, and during a period of only twenty-nine 
years it is said sixty thousand persons suffered 
for dissent, and seven thousand perished in 



prison. The sufferings of the Catholics were 
especially severe. Perjury or apostasy were 
conditions precedent to their enjoyment of 
civil privileges, and their priests were con- 
demned to a traitor's fate. 

There was at this mournful time a noble- 
man at the Court of King James, who had 
recently embrac^ed the much-detested Catholic 
faith. George Calvert, the father of the 
province of Maryland, who had risen in 1619^ 
to be Secretary of State, yielded his ambition 
in 1624, to a new-born sense of duty, and 
avowed his conversion. Influenced by the 
sufferings of those of his creed, and prompted 
))y that enlarged charity which marks the 
true Christian, George Calvert turned his eyes 
to the new world in search of a home for those 
who were forced to feel themselves strangers 
in the land of their nativity. Animated by 
these views, in 1623, he obtained from James 
I. the charter of Avalon, for a settlement in 
Newfoundland. He made two voyages to 
that country, but the rigor of the climate 
forced him to abandon the enterprise. 

The charter of Virginia having been annulled 
upon a quo tuarranto by the Court of King's 



Bench in 1623, and the King having been 
revested in all his rights, and could grant 
territorial jurisdiction and the possession of 
the soil not under private ownership to whom 
he pleased, Calvert, in company with three 
Jesuit priests in 1629, visited that country to 
fix upon a site for his new colony. The Vir- 
ginians having suspected his designs, and 
knowing his religious faith, forced him away 
by tendering the oath of supremacy, which, as 
a conscientious Catholic, he could not take. 
After exploring the territory bordering on 
the Chesapeake, he returned to England and 
applied to Charles for a patent. The high 
estimation in which he was held by the King, 
and the recollection of the many eminent ser- 
vices which he had rendered during his official 
career, secured for him a favorable hearing, 
notwithstanding his religious sentiments. 

Lord Baltimore's health had long been de- 
clining, and on April 15th, 1632, before his 
patent for Maryland had passed the great 
seal, he died. The grant of Maryland — so 
named in honor of the queen, Henrietta 
^laria — was made out and confirmed June 
20th, 1632, in the name of Cecilius Calvert, 



8 

George Calvert's eldest son, and heir to the 
title of Baron Baltimore. 

-The charter made Maryland a little kingdom 
in itself, owing no obedience to Parliament and 
no service to the king. It empowered the 
Lord Proprietary to make peace or war, to 
suppress insurrection or sedition ; to call out, 
arm and command the militia, and to declare 
martial law; to levy rents, taxes, dues and 
tolls; to confer titles and dignities,* to erect 
tow^ns, boroughs and cities ; to erect and found 
churches and cause them to be consecrated ; 
to make law^s, public or private, with the 
advice and consent of the freeman, and neces- 
sary ordinances, not affecting life, limb or pro- 
perty, without that consent ; to establish courts 
of justice and appoint judges, magistrates and 
other civil officers, and to execute the laws, 
even to the extent of taking life. Writs ran 
in his name; there was no appeal from his 
courts, nor did the laws enacted in his assem- 
bly require any confirmation from king or 
Parliament. The proprietary lacked no single 
royal powder ; his title ran " Cecihus, Absolute 
Lord of Maryland and Avalon," and the only 
difference between him and an independent 



^sovereign was the acknowledgment of fealty 
typified by the tender of " two Indian arrows " 
in every year on Tuesday in Easter week, and 
the reservation of the fifths of gold and silver. 

As soon as the Charter passed the great seal, 
Cecilius Calvert began his operations to colo- 
nize the new territory. He at first proposed to 
accompany the colony, but abandoned this 
intention and sent his younger brother 
Leonard, whom he appointed Lieutenant-Gov- 
ernor, or General. At this time civil and relig- 
ious liberty in England ceased to exist Puri- 
tan and Catholic were under the law of pre- 
scription, and multitudes of the former sought 
a refuge in New England. But for the latter, 
suffering under still more cruel oppression, 
there was no such asylum ; and this Baltimore 
proposed to provide, with the assistance of 
Father Richard Blount, Provincial of the 
Society of Jesus, and the great families of 
high rank and influence of the Catholic Peer- 
age in England. 

The Provincial of Jesuits knowing that the 
principle of religious toleration was to be 
adopted as one of the fundamental institu- 
tions of the new Province, entered heartily 



10 

into the enterprise, and planned to make 
Maryland a refuge for their persecuted fellow- 
believers. Two vessels were to bear the infant 
colony to their future home — the larger a 
strong ship of about four hundred tons was 
appropriately and beautifully called the "Ark,'' 
while its lighter companion, a pinnace of forty 
tons, was with equal taste named the "Dove," 
— the one bore religious freedom, the other the 
olive branch of peace to the new world. The 
expedition consisted of Leonard Calvert, as 
Governor, George Calvert, his brother, Jerome 
Hawley and Thomas Cornwaleys, as assist- 
ants, with twenty gentlemen of good fashion, 
and three hundred laboring men. The gentle- 
men were all Catholics. Among them were 
Fathers Andrew White, John Altham and 
Thomas Copley, priests of the Society of Jesus, 
who were sent out to officiate among the 
Catholic colonists and labor as missionaries 
among the Indians. Of the three hundred 
others, after a critical examination of the docu- 
ments bearing on the subject, I am convinced 
a majority were Catholics Having taken on 
board a part of their passengers, the vessels 
sailed from Gravesend, but the British Secre- 



11 

tary of State having received information that 
the passengers had gone without taking the 
oath of ahegiance required of all British sub- 
jects leaving the kingdom, a hurried order was 
dispatched to Admiral Pennington, then lying 
in the Downs, to give chase and bring them 
back. This was done. The "Ark" and "Dove" 
were brought back to Gravesend, where Wat- 
kins, the London "searcher," went on board 
and administered the oath to all he found, 
amounting to one hundred and twenty-eight 
persons. It is evident that the answer of the 
ship's master, that there were only a few 
others, and these abandoned the voyage, was 
deceptive, although -the oath of allegiance 
could have been taken by any conscientious 
Catholic. The formality of taking the oath 
being over, the vessels were allowed to depart 
in peace, and they dropped down to the Isle of 
Wight, where the three Jesuit priests, the 
twenty Catholic gentlemen, and the remaining 
one hundred and sixty laboring men, who did 
not take the oath of allegiance, and who it is 
believed were Catholics, came on board. 

While the ships were still lying in Cowes har- 
bor. Lord Baltimore sent down to his brother 



12 

Leonard, a body of instructions for the govern- 
ment of the expedition during the voyage and 
upon their arrival at their destination. In 
this interesting document, which time and 
space compels me to omit, we see the principles 
of Baltimore's principles, and the germs of 
the polity of Maryland. Religious toleration, 
"unity and peace," between members of differ- 
ent faiths, began on the Ark and Dove. He 
requires the Governor and Commissioners, "in 
their voyage to Maryland, they be very careful 
to preserve unity and peace amongst the pas- 
sengers on shipboard, and that they suffer no 
scandal nor offense to be given to any of the 
Protestants," and instructs "all the Roman 
Catholics to be silent upon all occasions of 
discourse concerning matters of religion," and 
'•treat the Protestants with as much mildness 
and favor as justice will permit." Whether 
we attribute it to wise policy, to the cogency 
of circumstances, or to a liberal and tolerant 
spirit, in advance of his age, on the part of the 
proprietary, the fact remains the same that 
equal justice and Christian charity to both 
Catholic and Protestant was the key-note of his 
rule. When his government was temporarily 



13 

overthrown, intoierance and persecution began^ 
but ceased as soon as he was reinstated in his 
authority. 

Bidding adieu to all familiar objects and 
wanted comforts and enjoyments, and break- 
ing the sweet ties of many beautiful affections, 
our wanderers in the Ark and Dove, on the 
22d of November, 1633 — being St. Caecilia's 
Day, as we are told by the narrative of Father 
White — set sail from Cowes for the New 
World. Never has a more precious freight 
surmounted the waters of the Atlantic than 
that borne in the vessels of this little fleet. 
Never have the breezes of the ocean wafted to 
our shores ships more richly laden. Never, 
since the earliest days of Christianity, has the 
world beheld a more interesting spectacle than 
that exhibited by these intrepid voyagers. 
Some of them had moved in the highest circles 
in their own land; many of them accustomed 
to the luxuries, and all of them to the conve- 
niences of cultivated life, had abandoned all of 
these, and were seeking, beyond the great sea, 
a far-off home in the wilderness. They knew 
that dangers were everywhere before them 
and around them, that disease in unknown 



14 

forms might invade them, t-hat death might 
soon strike them down and send them to 
premature graves in a strange land. To their 
enthusiastic vision all the comforts of life and 
all the pleasures of society were light and 
worthless in comparison with the liberty they 
sought. The tempestuous sea was less dreadful 
than the troubled waves of civil discord; the 
quicksands, the unknown shoals and unex- 
plored shores of a savage coast less fearful 
than the metaphysical abysses and perpetually 
shifting whirlpools of despotic ambition and 
ecclesiastical policy and intrigue ; the bow and 
the tomahawk of the transatlantic barbarian 
less terrible than the flame and fagot of the 
civilized European. With the Bible in their 
hands, the Spirit of God in their hearts, and 
His blessing on their heads, they were not 
turned aside from their onward course. "We 
placed our ship,'' says the good Father White 
in his narrative, "under the protection of God, 
of His Most Holy Mother, of St. Ignatius, and 
all the guardian angels of Maryland.'' Escaped 
from dangers in the port and channel, they 
gain the open sea, and for a few bright hours 
the deceitful element presents a smiling aspect. 



15 

But the shades of evening are deepened by a 
rising storm — it increases — their pinnace dis- 
plays the preconcerted signal of distress, and 
is suddenly lost to view! They mourn their 
companions with that peculiar grief felt by 
those who find themselves alone on the waste 
of waters. But a closer calamity soon engrosses 
their attention — their own stout ship is nearly 
engulfed. The solitary sail she spreads is rent 
by the fury of the blast, and no longer obedient 
to the helm, she rolls at the mercy of the 
waves ! The strongest hearts are shaken ! The 
mariners avow their danger and their fears! 
A sei:ious consultation is held about putting- 
back, the exiles betake themselves to prayer, 
and prepare as for their last confessions ! At 
this awful crisis Father White bows down 
before his God, as he artlessly remarks, "with 
less than his usual timidity." He represents 
"to Christ the Lord, to the Blessed Virgin, St. 
Ignatius, and the angels of Maryland" the 
object of his expedition— to honor his Saviour's 
blood in the salvation of barbarians ; and as 
the angel of the Lord stood at night by the 
ship-wrecked Paul, "bidding hiiii be of good 
cheer, so the interior light of present consola- 



16 

tion, and assurance against future danger on 
the voyage, is poured on the soul of this 
humble herald of the cross. He rises from his 
knees, and the storm is already abating. 

The remainder of the passage was prosperous 
and tranquil. In the West Indies the voyagers 
were blessed by the re-appearance of their 
pinnace. The course of the pilgrims, it seems, 
was by the way of the Antilles, Strait of Gib- 
raltar, the Madeiras, Fortunate Isles, Bona 
Vista Island near Angola, Barbadoes, Island 
of St. Lucia, Matalina, and from thence to 
point "Comfort'' on the coast of Virginia, which 
they reached on the 27th of February. .Some 
eight or nine days spent in the enjoyment of 
the kindness of Governer Harvey, they set sail, 
and on the 3d of March, reached the Chesa- 
peake. Sailing up the bay they entered the 
Potomac and named Smith's Point, St.Gregory, 
and Point Lookout, St Michael's, in honor of 
all the angels. The shores of the Potomac 
were lined with armed warriors. Signal fires 
])laze on every point, and their portentous 
arrival is announced throughout the region, 
with all the exaggerations of savage wonder. 
They anchor near an island which they name 



17 

St. Clement's. For having entered "the land 
of Mary," their first sohcitude was to celebrate 
in a becoming manner "our blessed Ladle's 
day," the twenty-fifth of March, and to mark 
by a significant act of religion their solemn 
entry into the province. The doctrines and 
usages of the Catholic Church regulated the 
exi^ression of their feelings and furnished the 
appropriate ceremonial. "On the day of the 
Annunciation," says Father White, "we first 
offered the sacrifice of the mass, never before 
done in this region of the world ; after which, 
having raised on our shoulders an immense 
cross, which we had fashioned from a tree, and 
going in procession to the designated spot, 
assisted by the Governor and his associates 
and other Catholics, we erected the trophy of 
Christ, the Saviour, and on our bended knees 
humbly recited the Litanies of the Holy Cross.' 
Catholic and Protestant, they adored God, and 
returned thanks for the beautiful land He had 
given them — for this w^as Maryland. The 
memory of that day must make the heart of 
every Marylander beat with pride and pleas- 
ure I All united in fraternal exultation round 
the emblem of sacrifice for all. Beneath the 



18 

sacred shadow of that cross all dissension was 
forgotten, and it was upon the shores of a new 
continent, amid the solitude of a wilderness 
and the silence of majestic nature, that the 
principle of Toleration in all its purity was 
given to the world. They had come hither to 
save from profanation the sacred fire of their 
desolated altars, and like the illumining pillar 
of captive Israel, it had cheered them in dark- 
ness, and led them on to the land of promise. 
They had put their trust in God ; and he 
seemed to have moulded the savage nature 
into mildness and courtesy for their coming. 
They, who were retreating from the persecu- 
tion of their Christian brethren, came to he 
welcomed by the confidence and affection of 
the savage. 

And now their temporal necessities demand 
their care ; but mindful of the claims of jus- 
tice, they seek the rulers of the country to 
conciliate their friendship and acquire equi- 
table title to the lands. A change had come 
over the spirit of the people. They who so late 
were arrayed with hostile bearing now greet 
them with the tokens of amity and the words of 
peace. The arrow had dropped from the bow- 



19 

string; they threw aside the tomahawk and 
spear. " Come back," exclaims the Regent of 
Potomeack to Father Altham, who had shed 
on his wilhng mind a gleam of the light of 
revelation, "we will eat at one table; my fol- 
lowers shall hunt for you, we will have all 
things in common." 

Understanding that the " Emperor of Pas- 
catoway" had a sort of suzerainty over the 
neighboring tribes, Governor Calvert set out 
to pay a visit to that potentate, who lived at 
Pascatoway, some seventy miles up the Poto- 
mac. Sailing up the river he went to " Potow 
meek Town," where a werowance, or king, 
lived, who bid them welcome. Leaving these 
hospitable savages, Calvert kept up the river 
to Pascatoway, where he found many Indians 
assembled, and among them an Englishman, 
Henry Fleete, who knew their language and 
acted as interpreter. With ample license from 
the sovereign of Pascatoway, whose sway was 
acknowledged by the surrounding tribes, 
the voyagers, accompanied by Captain Fleete, 
who knew well the country, retire to the beau- 
tiful sheet (3f water that spreads its calm 
mirror before us, which they named the St. 



20 

Oeorge's river, but which is known at this day 
by the name of St. Mary's river. Here they 
found an Indian town, the residence of a chief 
or king named Yoacomico, who received Cal- 
vert very kindly, entertained him over night, 
giving him his own bed to sleep upon, and 
spent the next day in showing him the coun- 
try. The fertile shores of the St. Mary's 
pleased Calvert ; it was tenanted by a gentle 
race, whose peaceful habits were fostered by 
the abundance they "drew from the water and 
the land. The fierce and warlike Susquehan- 
noughs had marked them for their prey, and 
unable to repel their incursions, they had 
already resolved on a removal, which had par- 
tially begun. Hence they readily shared their 
dwellings and growing crops with the strang- 
ers, and agreed to abandon them entirely, 
with their cultivated lands, at the close of the 
following season. Father White remarks : 
"One of these cabins has fallen to me and my 
associates, in which we are accommodated 
well enough for the time, until larger dwell- 
ings are provided. You might call this the 
first chapel of Maryland." Does not these 
transactions remind you, my friends, of the 



21 

dealings of the Most High with His chosen^ 
people ? " I sent before you hornets, and I 
drove them out from their places ; not with 
thy sword or with thy bow ; and I gave you a 
land in which you had not labored, and cities 
to dwell in which you built not ; vineyards 
and olive-yards which you planted not." In 
the intercourse of the Cal verts with the red 
men was also realized the prophetic exclama- 
tion of the psalmist : " Mercy and Truth are 
met together ; Justice and Peace have kissed.'' 
Guided by the spirit of their religion, the 
colonists conciliated the friendship of the na- 
tive Indians, and, in all their dealings with 
them, were governed by the strictest rules of 
equity and the purest sentiments of humanity. 
They did not usurp possession of the soil. They 
purchased thirty miles of their district for good 
consideration. Not with the trinkets and 
finery with which the credulous savage might 
find himself, on returning reflection, a splendid 
beggar; not with the maddening draught 
that would steep his senses in blissful delirium 
for an hour, and leave him unnerved as des- 
pairing to the waking sense of his beastly 
degradation ; not with the envied implements- 



22 

of European warfare, which, through the accel- 
erated extiri)ation of the red race by kindred 
hands, should clear the forest for the steady 
encroachment of the stranger. No ! my fellowr 
citizens, the Pilgrims of Maryland regarded 
the Indians as part of the human family, and 
as such, entitled to its rights. In their inter- 
course with them, they acted upon the golden 
rule proclaimed by the Saviour himself, "As 
you would men should do to you, do ye also to 
them likewise," and thus won their love and 
affection by depriving them of all cause of 
complaint. They bargained for the Indian's 
land, but they multiplied what remained to 
him, by gifts of the axe and hoe, and rakes and 
knives. They narrowed his hunting grounds, 
but they clothed him with the fabrics of the 
loom, and dispensed with his garment of skins. 
In the discharge of mutual offices of kindness 
and hospitality, side by side journeyed through 
life's pilgrimage, the wandering savage and 
the humble Christian. So favorably had these 
children of the forest been impressed with a 
proper sense of the just principles of action of 
the pilgrims, that we find the King of the 
Patuxent declaring in savage eloquence that 



23 

^' I love the English so well, that if they should 
go about to kill me, if I had so much breath 
to speak, I would command the people not to 
revenge my death, for I know that they would 
not do such a thing except it were through my 
own fault." And their subsequent intercourse 
with the aborigines justified his confidence. 
While the laws prohibited pre-emption by indi- 
viduals of tlieir rights of occupancy, and thus 
averted a most copious source of injury to that 
simple race, our early records abundantly attest 
that the Indian title was always extinguished 
by liberal purchase. The trade with the sav- 
ages was subjected to legislative regulation, 
for the prevention of abuses, and the nefarious 
traffic in arms forbidden by a policy as humane 
as it was prudent. 

While their brethren of New England went 
armed to the corn-field, or were startled from 
their slumbers by the midnight blaze of their 
dwellings ; while their Sunday hymns were 
echoed by the war-whoop, and the widowed 
matron escaped from her slaughtered captors, 
came back with their scalps, to clasp the man- 
gled remains of her children with hands yet 
reeking with the blood and brains of their 



24 

murderers — the Pilgrim of Maryland and the 
Indian were kneeling in peace together at the 
feet of Jesus. 

Having obtained a right to a portion of the soil , 
Calvert and his associates landed on the 27th of 
March, 1G34, near what is now called Chancellor 
Point, and going about a mile, laid out a con- 
venient site for a city, which they named 
St. Mary's, in honor of the blessed Virgin. The 
first thing the colonists did was to erect a 
guardhouse for their defence, and a storehouse 
for the storage of their supplies. The blessings 
of Heaven prospered all their labors. The little 
colony immediately took root, and thrived and 
iiourished beyond all former examples. The 
Indians, who were preparing at the time of 
their arrival to leave that part of the country, 
gave up to them their cultivated grounds. It 
was the proper season to begin the labors of 
husbandry. The soil was rich ; the streams 
abounded with fish ; the magnificent forests 
were alive with game. Intermingling as 
brothers and sisters, with the children of na- 
ture around them, the wives and daughters of 
the colonists learned from the squaws the 
various modes of preparing Indian corn, and 



25 

their young men were accompanied by tawny 
warriors to the chase. 

For several years nothing occurred to dis- 
turb the harmony or check the growth of the 
colony, except the ineffectual efforts of Clai- 
borne and a few other restless spirits from 
Virginia, to dispute the authority of its gov- 
ernment and rouse the Indians to hostility. 
Father White and his companions labored at 
first among the tribes which dwelt on the 
banks of the Patuxent. Soon after they estab- 
lished a mission on the Isle of Kent, and car- 
ried the Gospel to the southern boundary of 
the present District of Columbia. In 1639 
they had the happiness of converting Chilo- 
macon, the Tayac or powerful king of the 
Pascataways, and of administering the sacra- 
ment of l)aptism to him, his wife and child, 
and his principal counsellor, Mosorcoques, in 
the presence of Governor Calvert and a retinue 
of honor, in a chapel erected for the occasion 
by these pious proselytes at an Indian town 
about fifteen miles south of the present city of 
Washington. Several members of the ruling 
families at Patuxent, and also at Potopaco, 
with others in that vicinity to the number of 



26 

one hundred and thirty, were added to the 
Church before the year 1642. The chief and 
principal inhabitants of the town of Potomac, 
and four neighboring chiefs, with some mem- 
bers of their respective tribes, were in Uke 
manner brought into the Christian fold about 
this period. We cannot accurately estimate 
the entire number of converts ; but hope and 
gratitude now swelled the missionary's heart, 
for the prospect of ultimate success was un- 
clouded. Several fathers had arrived succes- 
sively from Europe to aid the venerable White 
and take the place of Father Altham, who had 
gone from the scene of his earthly toils to 
intercede in Heaven for those in whose behalf 
he had labored on earth. Some of them, 
particularly Father White, had become familiar 
with the language of the Indians. He also 
composed for the instruction of the natives a 
Catholic catechism in several dialects. The 
printing press he imported from England, and 
it is believed that he used it for the printing 
of his catechism for circulation among his 
aboriginal flock. A copy of this catechism, 
printed on the first printing press ever intro- 
duced into an English colony, was found by 



27 



Father McSherry among the archives of the 
Society at Rome. Father White continued to 
prosecute his studies of the native dialects, 
and prepared also an Indian grammar and a 
dictionary. Our brief history of the first 
printing press would be incomplete if we did 
not remind our Puritan friends that when the 
Puritans in Maryland attacked the mission- 
aries and destroyed their property in 1655, 
this previous instrument of early Christian 
enlightenment and education disappeared. 

For the first five years no considerable 
settlements were made beyond the precinct 
of the town of St. Mary's. The lands within 
the town were divided among the first colonists 
in a hberal and equitable manner. In his 
letter of instructions, Governor Calvert was to 
pass in freehold, to each of the first adven- 
turers, ten acres of land within the town of 
St. Mary's, for any person the said adventurers 
transported to Maryland; and five acres to 
every other adventurer which he transported 
since the time of the first plantation. About 
this time the settlement at St. Mary's was 
created into a county. In 1638-9 Kent Hun- 
dred on the Eastern Shore was made a hun- 
dred "within the county of St. Mary's." 



28 

~^The first assembly held in Maryland seems 
to have consisted of all the freemen in the 
province. It convened at St. Mary's on the 
26th of February, 1635, but the records of its 
proceedings haij^fi^erished. The assembly of 
1637-8 was composed altogether of members 
of the Catholic faith. Indeed the Jesuits, in 
their journals, say that nearly all the Protest- 
ants who first came over had been converted 
to the Catholic faith. Three of the burgesses 
summoned to the assembly were the Jesuits, 
Fathers White and Altham, and Thomas 
Copley, but they excused themselves from 
attending. The three chief officers of the 
colony, Leonard Calvert, Jerome Hawley and 
Thomas Cornwalys, were also Catholics. At 
this time and for many years after everything 
about St. Mary's bore the stamp of a strong 
Catholic flavor. Besides giving a Catholic 
name to the province, they also did the same 
in regard to ihe towns, hundreds, manors, 
tracts, ci^eeks, rivers, promontories, and when 
they decided to erect a State House, they built 
it in the shape of a cross. Sixty tracts and 
manors, most of them taken up at a very early 
period, bear the prefix of Saint. The creeks 



29 

and villages, to this day, attest the wide- 
spread prevalence of the same taste, senti- 
ments and sympathies. At a very early period 
the enemies of the new province took every 
occasion to speak of Maryland as a popish 
colony, dangerous to England and to the 
Protestant English in America, and one of the 
tirst acts passed by the Assembly of 1638-9 
was one declaring " that Holy Church within 
this province shall have all her rights and lib- 
erties/^ This act provided in a general phrase 
for the rights of the Catholic Church, and at 
the same time placed the whole population., 
cleric as well as lay, under the civil law. As 
we have state(J, the Proprietary, in his original 
proclamation inviting adventurers, had prom- 
ised freedom of religion to all Christian men. 
In another proclamation after the first set- 
tlement, he had prohibited "all unseasonable 
disputations in point of religion tending to the 
disturbance of the public peace and quiet of 
the colony, and to the opening of faction in 
religion." In July, 1638, William Lewis, a 
Catholic, had been fined 500 pounds of tobacco 
for interfering, by opprobrious reproaches, with 
two Protestants, Francis Gray, a freeman, and 



30 



Robert Sedgrave, a servant, for reading a Book 
of Protestant Sermons." Again, on March 22, 
1642, a petition was presented by the "Prot- 
estant Cathohcs," complaining against Mr. 
Thomas Gerard, for taking awsij the books out 
of the chapel. Upon which charge, after due 
examination, the Assembly found Mr. Gerard 
'^Guilty," and sentenced him "to return the 
Books and to relinquish all title to them, or to 
the house, and pay a fine of 500 lbs. of Tobacco 
towards the maintenance of the first minister 
as should arrive'' At this time the population 
of St. Mary's was estimated at about 600 per- 
sons, and there was no Protestant minister in 
the county until 1650, when Re^. William Wil- 
kinson, of the Protestant Episcopal Church, 
came into it. He appears to have settled in 
St. George's Hundred, at St. George's Church, 
but now known as Poplar Hill Church. He 
was unquestionably the first permanent Church 
of England clergyman in Lord Baltimore's 
colony, and was then forty-eight years of age. 
After a ministry of thirteen years, he died 
in 1663. 

I must not detain you with the details of the 
early settlement of St. Mary's, but it is, perhaps, 



31 

proper that I should give you a brief sketch of 
the old State House. The lot upon which it was 
built was surveyed in 1639, and a "towne 
house" was authorized to be built thereon, 
which was j)atented to Governor Leonard Cal- 
vert in 1641. Upon his death at St. Mary's, 
June 9th, 1647, it was sold by Margaret Brent, 
his Executrix, to Hugh Lee', in 1650. In 1662 
it was purchased by the Province, and was 
used as the Governor's residence until 1674. 
In that year an act was passed for building a 
State House in St. Mary's. In May, the Gov- 
ernor and Council proposed that it should be 
built of brick. It was erected with a jail, and 
cost 330,000 pounds of tobacco. The bricks were 
made in the city, as all the bricks have been 
which have been used in the erection of build- 
ings, from the foundation of the province to 
the present time. In 1688 an act was passed 
for repairing it, and in 1695 the Lower House 
passed an act directing that it should l)e used 
for a Court House and Church. In 1708, it 
appears that a town had been erected at 
Sheppard's old fields near the head of Britton 
Bay, on the land of Phihp Lynes, and that 
a Court House was to be built there. At the 



32 

same time the public buildings and lands at 
St. Mary's were ordered to be sold. In 1710 
it was called Seymour Town, but in 1728, 
Leonard Town. The public buildings at 
St. Mary's, however, were not sold. In 1720, 
an act was passed vesting the old State House 
in the Rector and Vestry of William and Mary 
Parish, and their successors in fee simple for 
the use of the .parish forever. The old State 
House was in the form of a cross fifty feet by 
forty ; the longest lay East and West. 





20 feet. 

1 

(M 




16 feet. 

00 


• 


14 feet. 

CO 




cq n> 





OLTLINE OF OLD STATE HOUSE. 



The vestry meetings of William and Mary 
Parish at this time were held at Poplar Hill 
Church, St. George's, and on May 23, 1720, the 
vestry agreed with John Doyne and Francis 



33 

Hopewell to repair the State House. On March 
-5th a door was ordered to be placed in the 
middle of the back buildings, as one of the 
wings were called, and to place the communion 
table in the place where the door then was, the 
vacancies being built up with brick In the 
place of the two large windows in the porch 
where the communion table was to stand, there 
was to be placed two windows 8 feet high and 
22 inches wide, and the two large windows 
were to be placed on each side of the back 
buildings and were to be the entrance or porch 
of the building The walls of the two ends 
were to be raised to the height of the main 
building, and to be ceiled square with the top 
of the arch after the model of the old church 
at St. Mary's. The building would accommo- 
date four hundred persons. It is said that about 
the year 1700, there was so much opposition by 
the Catholics to holding Protestant worship in 
the old State House, that the Protestants ap- 
plied to a British man-of-war for assistance, 
and the commander sent three cannon to the 
aid of the Protestants. They remained in 
the church-yard until about 1823, when they . 
were removed to Washington. In 1829, the 



34 

vestry of William and Mary Parish tore 
down the old State House, and used the 
bricks to build the present church. In 1839, 
the State purchased the eastern half of the lot^ 
and erected on it the St. Mary's Female Sem- 
inary. In IS-iO, the Court House was burned 
and all the records were destroyed. 

It is time this protracted discourse should 
draw to a close, but I cannot end without 
alluding to the total overthrow of Catholic in- 
fluence and civil and religious liberty in the 
province. During Claiborne's and Ingle's re- 
bellion Father White and two other mission- 
aries were seized, put in irons, and sent to 
England to be tried as priests and Jesuits. 
The others concealed themselves chiefly in 
Virginia. The Indian flocks were dispersed, 
as sheep without a shepherd. The good fathers 
returned to them, and again were chased away ; 
nor were they ever after allowed to continue 
their missionary labors without molestation. 
The tribes which seemed destined to become 
Christians and civilized have disappeared for- 
ever. But the poor Indians were not the only 
•sufferers. The hydra of revolt derived a sort 
of immortality from anti-Catholic rancour; 



35 

and though at first struck down, it ever rose 
with redoubled vigor and showed its gratitude 
for the mercy, which had failed to scar its 
mutilated trunk, by a new and more ruthless 
onset. Claiborne, "the evil genius of the 
colony," and others like him, were always 
ready to head the insurrection, and the banks 
of the Severn, where the Puritans lately 
banished from Virginia had been allowed to 
settle, became the hot-bed of sedition. "To root 
out the abomination of Popery and prelacy," to 
foster a " thorough godly reformation," and to 
vindicate their rights and liberties, brought 
into awful danger by the Jesuits and the Pope, 
were the ever-ready pretexts of each reason- 
able outbreak, and especially of that successful 
conspiracy, which, on the accession of William 
and Mary, took the name of " The Protestant 
Association," and completely revolutionized 
the Government of Maryland. We have seen 
that from the moment of the institution of the 
Government of Maryland it "tolerated all 
Christian churches and established none." The 
Governor was required to take an oath, which 
was prescribed by Cecilius, Lord Baltimore, in 
1636, two years after the landing of the fii\st 



36 

colony, which must forever make memorable 
its noble framer, — "that he would not by him- 
self, or by another, directly or indirectly, 
trouble or molest, or discountenance any per- 
son professing to believe in Jesus Christ for or 
in respect of religion ; that he would make no 
difference of persons in conferring offices, 
favors, or rewards, for or in respect of religion, 
but merely as they should be found faithful 
and well-deserving, and endowed with moral 
virtues and abilities ; that his aim should be 
public unity ; and that if any person or officer 
should molest any person, he would protect 
the person molested, and punish the offender." 
A Catholic legislature, in 1649, apprehensive 
that the persecutions they had escaped would 
cross the broad Atlantic in search of them, to 
teach, as it were, by example, the true spirit of 
the Christian church, hastened to enact into 
form the principles of religion, upon which 
they had acted ever since the foundation of 
the settlement. " And whereas," so ran the 
sul)lime language of the preamble of the 
statute, "the enforcing of the conscience in 
matters of religion hath frequentlj^ fallen out 
to be of dangerous consequence in those com- 



37 

nionwealtlis where it has been practiced, and 
the more quiet and peaceable government of 
this province, and better to preserve the mutual 
love and amity among the inhabitants, no per- 
son professing to believe in Jesus Christ, shall 
be any ways troubled, molested or discounte- 
nanced for his or her rehgion, or in the free 
exercise thereof, within this province or the 
islands thereunto belonging, nor any way 
(compelled to the belief or exercise of any other 
religion against his or her consent." 

About the time of the enacting of this 
statute, the authorities of Virginia, in pursu- 
ance of a resolve of the legislature of that 
province, passed some nine years previously, 
and directed against dissenting ministers, com- 
manded all such as would not conform to the 
discipline of the Church of England to depart 
by a certain day. In the beautiful spirit which 
prompted the adoption of the statute of free 
dom already quoted, the fugitives from Vir- 
ginia intolerance were invited to take up their 
abode in Maryland, where all agree they were 
most kindly received and protected. These 
people exemplified the snake in the fable, and 
afterwards stung the bosom that sheltered 



38 

them, when persecuted and homeless, they 
were wanderers upon the face of the earth. 
Nor did these only find an asylum here— every 
clime sent its emigrants, and in the benign 
spirit of legislation, the sympathies of the 
colony were extended to them all, without 
regard to the sect to which they belonged, or 
the nation from whence they came. Of these 
facts, no information was sought ; all that was 
known was, that the emigrants were children 
of misfortune, and as such, they were kindly 
received and nobly cherished. The Huguenots 
from France, and the afflicted from Holland, 
from Germany, from Finland, from Sweden, 
from Piedmont, and even from Bohemia, the 
country of Jerome and of Huss, came those 
seeking protection under the tolerant sway of 
the founders of Maryland, and at once, with 
equal franchises, were made citizens. At this 
time, beyond the boundaries of Maryland, there 
was not in all the Anglo-American colonies one 
spot on which the Catholic might hope in peace 
and safety to practice his religion. In no])le 
contrast to the action of Virginia, as we have 
seen, was the liberal spirit of the Pilgrim 
fathers of Maryland. Not less so was it to 



39 

that of Pennsylvania, of Massachusetts, and of 
Ehode Island, notwithstanding the eulogiums 
which over and over again have been pro- 
nounced upon the conduct of their founders. 
Although Roger Williams, with heroic firm- 
ness, had declared in 1684, when resisting the 
intolerant spirit surrounding him, that "the 
doctrine of persecution for cause of conscience 
was evidently and lamentably contrary to the 
doctrine of Jesus Christ,'' and that "the 
removal of the yoke of soul oppression would 
prove an act of mercy and righteousness to 
engage the whole and every interest and con- 
science to preserve the common liberty and 
peace," he forgot the truth and justice of the 
one and the policy of the other, when he came 
to found a colony after the settlement of Mary- 
land, by excluding the Catholic from within 
the circle of his justice and benevolence. To 
the injury of his fame, he allowed for more 
than fifty years to exist upon the statute books 
of his Plantations, notwithstanding his boast 
that his "colony would have no law whereby 
to punish any for declaring by words their 
minds concerning the things-of God,'' an act 
disfranchising the Catholic. So, too, with Mas- 



40 

sachusetts, where the unoffending and peaceful 
order of Friends were proscribed and their 
leaders led to death, because to the fancy of 
fanaticism the preaching of their itinerant 
members seemed but " extravagances." That 
Penn was not animated by that enlarged 
charity which encompasses in its affectionate 
embrace the whole human family, is fully 
established by the eager anxiety he evinced in 
his letters to his magistrates for the annoyance 
and proscription of the Catholic, and that too 
at a time when, according to the testimony of 
George Fox, the great leader of his sect, in Cath- 
olic Maryland, the believers in his creed wera 
not only not persecuted for their religious wor- 
ship, which was held without interruption, but 
where *' the truth was received with reverence 
and gladness." 

I am not ignorant that these allusions to the 
founders of the provinces to which I have re- 
ferred do not harmonize with the pompous 
encomiums that have for full a century been 
bestowed upon them. Truth, however, wounded 
in the effort to exalt these men, demands that 
historical facts should be known ; but in giving 
it utteran(;e, far be it from my purpose to 



41 



lessen the large claim they justly earned to the 
veneration of posterity. In their day and 
generation they all did much to strike down 
the fetters which hampered the energies of the 
soul, and, if they were not entirely superior to 
all the prejudices of their early education, we 
should not deem it strange when we find at 
this advanced and enlightened day in our 
midst, hundreds behind the liberal spirit of 
their age, and who, with the keenness of olden 
times, seek to victimize their fellow men for 
the sin of beheving a little more or less than 
themselves. If we reject also the testimony 
brought against Koger Williams and William 
Penn, and admitting all that their panegyrists 
have asserted, we must still say that both of 
them came into the field but as gleaners of 
that honor and glory, the full harvest of which 
had been gathered by the Calverts and the 
Pilgrims of Maryland. 

The bigots who sicken at Maryland's un- 
rivalled glory, have, with keen-eyed malignity, 
sought and fancied that they found another 
reason for hawking at her in her lofty flight. 
They say, " the Catholic colonists had not the 
power to persecute even if they had the will.'' 



42 

We know that they had not the will ; and that 
is sufficient. But is it true that thej'', who had 
the power to do g-ood and used it so nobly, 
were so powerless for evil, had they been evil- 
minded ^ Could they not have hung the 
inoffensive and unprotected Quakers, had 
they taken a fancy to that vocation, just as 
well as the Puritans of Boston 'i Could they 
not have excluded dissenters from the province, 
as Virginia did, and would not Charles I have 
supported them in doing so? Yet it is on 
record that in the very infancy of the colony, 
in 1634, Leonard Calvert sent the "Dove'' to 
Massachusetts Bay with an invitation to the 
people there to come and settle in Maryland, 
promising them the free exercise of their 
religion 'i Can any proposition then be more 
satisfactorily established than that to the Pil- 
grims of Maryland belongs the honor of first 
incorporating into a system of government and 
practising the doctrine of religious liberty ? 

In 1688 we still see the people of Maryland 
' 'dwelling under the Proprietary Government 
in apparent security and contentment." In a 
short time we find the old land-marks swept 
away, and the destinies of Maryland committed 



43 

to the keeping of strange hands. The manner 
of the change is buried in forgetfulness, as 
the destroyers left no record-evidence of their 
acts. It is strange but true, according to 
McMahon, that while the Protestant revolution 
"was avowedly originated and conducted for 
the defence and security of the Protestant 
religion," there is not the first trace of evidence 
that the free exercise of that religion by its 
professors was ever, for a moment, endangered 
or restricted. "The articles of grievances 
exhibited by the lower house to the upper 
house, at the session of 1688, do not ascribe a 
single act of delibera^te oppression, of wanton 
exercise of power, immediately to the Proprie- 
tary or his Governors. "They do not,'' con- 
tinues that able historian, "even insinuate the 
slightest danger to the Protestant religion, 
or impute to the Proprietary administration a 
single act or intention militating against the 
free enjoyment and exercise of it " Fanatical 
men had poisoned the public mind ; a ground- 
less revolution had hurled the Proprietary 
from his ancient dominion ; and at the express 
solicitation of the rebellious "Associators,'' 
Maryland was placed in the humiliating 



44 

attitude of a royal province, and liberty of 
conscience had perished. King William as- 
sumed the executive power ; and, on the 9th 
of April, 1692, Sir Lionel Copley, by royal 
appointment, dissolved the revolutionary con- 
vention, and undertook the government of the 
province. The first act of the new assembly 
was "the act of recognition of William and 
Mary ;" by the second, "the Church of England 
was formally established." "Thus," continues 
McMahon, "was introduced, for the first time 
in Maryland, a church establishment sustained 
by law, and fed by general taxation." The 
Catholic, the Puritan, the Quaker, the Presby- 
terian, the Baptist, and every other non-con- 
formist, was taxed to support a form of 
worship which they repudiated. Under the 
old system every man had paid his own 
preacher. 

Upon the new plan, the whole people now 
paid the ministers of the dominant party. 
King William had the sagacity to emancipate, 
in a measure, the great body of Protestant 
dfssenters in England from the thraldom of 
the established Church. Not so in Maryland ! 
All who dissented from th% dominant party — 



45 

Protestants as well as Catholics— were pro- 
scribed and disfranchised. Even the peaceful 
conventicles of the Quakers were classed 
amongst "Unlawful Assemblies,'' and afforded 
material for prosecution. However, in 1702, 
the English toleration act was extended to all 
Protestant dissenters in the colony. The Cath- 
olic was now the only one under the brand of 
intolerance. And so he remained until the 
Revolutionary war. "Thus," says McMahon, 
"in a colony, which was established by Cath- 
olics, and grew up to power and happiness 
under the government of a Catholic, the Cath- 
olic inhabitant tvas the only victim of intolerance y 
This ungenerous policy not only reached to 
the complete disfranchisement of its victim, 
but it pursued him into the retirement of do- 
mestic life, subjecting him to injury and insult, 
and lacerating every feeling of his heart. The 
personal animosity of the Protestants against 
the Catholics was at one period carried to such 
an extent that the latter were even excluded 
from social intercourse with the former, were 
not permitted to walk in front of the State 
House, and were actually obliged to wear 
swords for their personal protection. The act 



46 

of 17(U expressly aims at the prevention of the 
growth of the Cathohc rehgion in the province. 
By its provisions all priests were prosecuted 
who were found in the discharge of their duty; 
a reward of £100 was offered to any one who 
discovered a priest performing his religious 
duties; perpetual imprisonment or l)anishment 
was inflicted on any one professing the Cath- 
olic religion who kept a school, or educated, or 
governed, or boarded any youth ; another sec- 
tion provided that if any Popish youth shall 
not, within six months after he attains his ma- 
jority, take certain oaths inconsistent with the 
faith of Catholics, he should be incapable of 
taking lands by descent, and his next of kin, 
being a Protestant, should succeed to them ; 
and any person professing the Catholic faith 
was incompetent to purchase land. Another 
provisit)n provided that any person sending his 
child abroad to be educated in the Catholic 
faith should forfeit £100 ; it also provided that 
the Governor had the power to deprive a father 
of the earnings of his labor for the sake of edu- 
cating his child in the Protestant faith. In 
1704 an impost of 20 shillings per poll was laid 
on all negroes and Irish Catholics imported 



47 

into the province, while Irish Protestants were 
admitted free. Later on this act was repealed, 
and a penalty was imposed of £5 in each case 
for the concealment of the Irish importation ; 
and afterwards it was enacted that certain ob- 
noxious test oaths should be tendered to Irish 
servants on board of any ship arriving. In 
1715 religious tyranny was still more atrocious. 
The Assembly enacted that the children of a 
Protestant father might be taken from a Cath- 
olic mother and placed where they might be 
securely educated in the Protestant religion. 
The act of 1716 excludes Catholics from all 
offices of trust and profit by requiring from 
the candidate a denial of transubstantiation. 
In 1718, Catholics were rendered incapable 
of giving a vote in any election of delegates 
without having renounced their faith by taking 
the test-oath. In the year 1717, the tax upon 
Irish servants was doubled, and within sixteen 
years no less than twelye acts were passed 
levelled against their entering Maryland . But, 
like the wheat fly, they showed themselves in 
spite of persecution ; and the legislature in des- 
pair, at last prevented owners of vessels from 
shipping them. But while the Irish Catholic 



48 

was forbidden our coast, the branded and 
cropped convict was, to a certain extent, 
welcomed to the shores of Maryland, and per- 
mitted to amalgamate with the ordinary popu- 
lation. These, however, were but a few of 
the oppressions practiced upon the Catholics of 
Maryland after the colony was taken from the 
hands of the Calverts. The Council granted 
orders to take children from the contact of 
Catholic parents; Catholic laymen were de- 
prived of the right of suffrage, and the lands 
of Catholics were assessed double when the 
exigencies of the province required additional 
supplies. 

But this was not all that they suffered under 
the brand of intolerance. The City of St. Mary's, 
the venerable mother of our State, she who 
had given shelter to the Pilgrim fathers, and 
around her precincts clustered the tenderest 
affections, she was to pay the penalty of her 
loyalty to the Catholic faith. She had wit- 
nessed the early sorrows and stragglings of 
our early fathers, and the glory of their 
triumph over rude nature. Her halls had 
echoed the voice of patriotic men, and her 
pulpits had sent forth the inspired word to en- 



49 

courage the weary settler of every creed, and 
to reclaim the untutored child of the forest. 
But now her venerated privileges were to. be 
torn away, and she was to be left to mourn 
amid solitudes, and to waste from the recollec- 
tions of men. 

The old city was incorporated by letters 
patent from Charles Calvert, November 3d, 
1668, with all the immunities, rights, benefits 
and privileges appertaining to a more pros- 
perous municipality. By its charter, it was 
not to exceed one square mile in extent, and to 
be governed by a Mayor, " one person learned 
in the law by the name of a Recorder," six 
Aldermen, and ten Common Counsellors. The 
city was to have a common seal, Philip Calvert 
to be the first Mayor, John Morecroft to be 
Recorder, and William Calvert, Jerome White, 
Daniel S. Jenifer, Garrett Van Sweringen, 
Mark Cordea and Thomas Cosden to serve as 
Aldermen, " as long as they shall well behave 
themselves " The Mayor, Recorder and Alder- 
men were to elect the ten Common Councilmen 
on the 3d of November of each year. The 
Mayor, Recorder, Aldermen and. Common 
Councilmen, were to elect a Mayor at the same 



50 

time from the Aldermen, and also their own 
successors. The Mayor, Recorder and Alder- 
men were to appoint all constables and other 
officers, and to rule, order and govern the city 
under the laws and ordinances as Justices of 
^the Peace. The city officers were given license 
to hold a market every Saturday night within 
the precincts of the city, and a fair once a year 
on the 23d of February, " for the sale and vend- 
ing of all manner of goods, cattle, merchandise 
and all other commodities," and to tax all goods 
sold. They were also authorized to hold court 
during the fair to determine all quarrels and 
controversies. 

At this tirne St. Mary's was the largest and 
most thriving city in the province. It con- 
tained the State House, and prison, the little 
Catholic chapel, a fort, a storehouse, Governor s 
mansion and several dwellings. We have the 
following word picture of the ancient city 
from the answer to the queries propounded 
by the Lords of the Committee on Trade and 
Plantations in 1677. It said: " St. Mary's could 
hardly be called a town, it being in length by 
the water about five miles, and in breadth 
upwards, toward the land, about a mile, in all 



51 

which space, excepting my own home and 
buildings, wherein the said courts and pubHc 
offices are kept, there are not above thirty 
houses, and those at considerable distance from 
each other." 

As the Puritan settlement on the Severn 
grew in power and influence, efforts were made 
to remove the seat of Government from St. 
Mary's to that place. In 1683, the records, 
together with the officers and courts of Judi- 
catures, were removed to Elk Ridge, in Anne 
Arundel County, and the Assembly met there. 
The inhabitants, however, feeling themselves 
unable to bear the burden of so many people 
which it brought together, and being unable 
to provide suitable accommodations for them , 
petitioned the Governor to cause the Assembly 
to meet at some other place. Accordingly, it 
next assembled at Battle Creek, in Patuxent 
river, but being unable to procure necessary 
accommodations, it broke up abruptly after a 
session of only three days. After this bitter 
experience the seat of Government continued 
at St. Mary's until 1692, when another attempt 
was made to remove it, but it was carried in 
the negative by the Assembly. After the 



52 

arrival of Governor Francis Nicholson, in 
July, 1694. he determined to convene the 
Assembly to meet "at Anne Arundel town,^' 
afterwards called Annapolis, on the 21st of 
September. This choice foreshadowed the 
doom of the cradle of the province, and at that 
session the removal was decided upon. This 
decision created the greatest consternation at 
St, Mary's, and the Mayor, Recorder, Alder- 
men, Common Councilmen, and -Freemen of 
the city made a pathetic appeal to Governor 
Nicholson to reconsider his decision. 

After giving a long and humble account of 
their grievances, the officials and citizens of 
St. Mary's offer the following "sugar plum" 
to the Governor if he should decide to permit 
the seat of government to remain at St. Mary's. 
They say : "To remove some scruple and objec- 
tion, and as we humbly conceive, the main one 
that hath been made against the conveniency 
of the place, that the gentlemen, the members 
of the house, have been forced to their great 
trouble oftentimes to travel on foot from Pa- 
tuxent to Saint Mary's, and so back again. It 
is humbly proposed, and we do offer to obligate 
ourselves forthwith, and so soon as possibly 



5S 

workmen and materials can be provided for 
the great ease and convenience of all persons 
at such times, as also at all other times, to pro- 
vide and procure a coach, or caravan, or both, 
to go in all times of public meetings of assem- 
blies and provincial courts, &c., every day daily 
between St. Mary's and Patuxent river, and at 
all other times once a week, and also to keep 
constantly half-a-dozen horses at least, with 
suitable furniture for any person or persons 
having occasion to ride post or otherwise, with 
or without a guide, to any part of the province 
on the Western Shore.'' This petition was 
signed by Philip Lynes, mayor ; Kenelm Ches- 
eldyn, recorder ; Henry Duton, John Lewellen, 
Jo. Watson, Thos. Beal, Philip Clark, Edward 
Greenhalgh, aldermen ; Thos. Waughop, Wm. 
Aisquith, Thos. Price, Richard Benton, Robert 
Mason, W. Taylard, Samuel Watkins, common 
councilmen ; J. Bouye, clerk; Samuel Wheeler, 
constable, and fifty- three freemen. 

The pathos and humility of the officials and 
inhabitants of the Catholic settlement at St. 
Mary's were thrown away on the Assembly, 
which repudiated the appeal with coarse and 
almost brutal scorn. They showed the acri- 



64 

mony of the dominant party in their reply 
when they said: "Saint Mary's only served 
hitherto to cast a blemish upon all the rest of 
the province." 

Remonstrance and appeal were all in vain, 
Annapolis rose upon the downfall of old St. 
Mary's, and in 1694 became the capital of 
Maryland. The ancient city was stripped of 
her privileges, of everything that gave her life, 
and she was left to waste and perish from the 
earth. Her population departed, her houses 
fell to ruins, and nothing is now left of her 
but a name and a memory. In 1708 Annap- 
olis was erected into a city, under a charter 
from Governor Seymour, and obtained the 
privilege of sending two delegates to the 
Assembly ; while the venerable town of St. 
Mary's, which had been dechning from the 
time she ceased to be the capital of the prov. 
ince, was deprived of her two representatives, 
which seems to have been the last blow to her 
falling fortunes. 

The ground, however, on which we stand, 
my fellow-citizens, is holy ground, the foot- 
prints of the good are on its sands, and its soil 
is enriched with the ashes from the sanctified 



55 

thurible. The hue that sweeps round this 
hmited horizon includes a space whence history 
draws her most attractive record, and presents 
scenes where indeed the purity of the nation 
and the beneficence of the act seems to invest 
the genius of history with the spirit of inspira- 
tion, and enables us to find beneath the sim- 
plicity of secular narration the means of 
spiritual instruction. 

It is time this protracted discourse should 
draw to a close. Mine is not a history, but a 
tribute to the virtues of the founders of Mary- 
land. Neither is it my more grateful task to 
follow your ancient State through her bright 
career of civil and military fame ; the wisdom 
of her legislation — the ardent spirit of liberty 
that has ever characterized her people ; her 
prompt and determined stand in resistance to 
British oppression ; her soil unpolluted by the 
stamps ; the deliberate, open, undisguised burn- 
ing of the tea at Annapolis ; her early call for 
a government based on the popular will, when 
the ties of affection to the parent State had 
been broken by unkindness ; the firmness 
of her sons, marshalled by a Smallwood, a 
Williams, a Gist, a Howard, or a Smith, under 



56 

every aspect of danger, and every form of 
privation, from the frozen plains of Valley 
Forge to the sweltry high hills of Santee ; 
while their bones were whitening every field 
of revolutionary glory, or her dashing Barney 
was guiding them to victory on the ocean ! 
The talents, the learning, the patriotisim of 
her Chases, her Martins, her Dulanys, her 
Car rolls, her Pinkneys, and her Taney s, or the 
Wirts and Harpers, whom adoption has made 
her own ; these, and the thousand incidents 
that illustrate them, must be told in better 
terms than mine. 

We all know how the sons and daughters of 
Maryland, besides founding and building up 
noble institutions within her own limits, have 
sought homes in other parts of the country, 
near and remote, and how powerfully their 
influence and enterprise have everywhere been 
felt. It may be safely said that there is hardly 
a State or county or city on the Continent, 
in which Maryland men and women are not 
turning their face towards this ancient city 
to-day with sorriething of the affectionate 
yearning of children towards an ancestral, or 
even a parental home. We all know what 



67 

contributions they have made to the cause of 
Education, of Learning, of Literature, of 
Science, and of Art. We all know what they 
have done for commerce on the ocean, and for 
Industry on the land, vexing eyery sea with 
their keels, and startling every waterfall with 
their looms and their hammers. 

Fellow-citizens, I have done. But before I 
turn from you, let me say there is no lesson 
more important to the happiness of men than 
that which is taught by the earliest history of 
our State. It is the lesson of charity ; it is the 
precept of our divine Redeemer, that we should 
love one another and do good to all men, 
even those who hate and persecute us. Your 
pilgrim fathers never paused to ask : Will our 
generosity be requited well or ill ? They did 
their duty. They acted their part faithfully, 
nobly in the history of the world They set a 
rising nation the example of universal benev- 
olence. In God they trusted for their recom- 
pense, and they have received it. The world 
is now resounding their praise. Looking down 
from a higher sphere of charity, they behold 
the principles which they professed and acted 
on triumphant throughout our vast republic. 



58 

and destined yet to triumph throughout the 
entire world. Mary landers emulate the glory 
of your fathers. Men of every State, of every 
Country and every Creed, learn that true 
religion, as angels sung when they announced 
our Saviour's birth, gives glory to God in the 
highest, and brings Peace and Good Will to 
Men. 

Let it be our high privilege, my friends, 
whilst we cherish with the fondest emotions 
of gratitude and love the recollection of the 
deeds of our fathers, to exclaim with one of 
the noblest an d truest of America's poets : 

" Peace to their memory — let it grow, 

Greener. with years, and blossom through the flight 
Of ages; let the mimic canvass show 

Their calm benevolent features ; let the light 
Stream on their deeds of love, that shunn'd the sight 

Of all but heaven, and in the book of fame 
The glorious record of their virtues write, 

And hold it up to men, and bid them claim 
A palm like theirs, and catch from them the hal- 
lowed flame." 



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